KIRKWALL: 9:31 DRAGON
Amelle walked, matching Aveline and Kiara's strides step for step, tipping her head back and looking at the skies above them. Nothing unusual about the sky tonight — the stars were the same as ever, a few clouds filtered the moon's glow. It was the same walk home she and Kiara had taken night after night since first setting foot in Kirkwall. They'd done the same work as they had for a year, collecting the same amount of pay — nothing — and now they were walking home, backs tired, stomachs growling. It was all quite the same as it had always been, but for one small difference.
They were now all masters of their own fate.
Amelle didn't give voice to the words, of course. It sounded far too… romantic, phrased just that way. But there was something incredibly liberating knowing they wouldn't have to deal with Athenril anymore, and knowing any coin they earned from this point on was theirs.
Earning coin, however, was something that was going to become vitally important for them, sooner rather than later. Particularly if it put them out of Gamlen's sooner. He'd already been making noises about them "chipping in," as if he wouldn't drink and gamble away any money they did contribute, and getting the Void out of his… Amelle couldn't quite call it his home, but the sooner they got out and could get on their own feet, the better.
Still, despite the uncertainty ahead of them, Amelle couldn't help but feel her steps were a little lighter. Which was more than she could say for Aveline.
"Maker, my feet are killing me."
Kiara sent the other woman a sidelong glance. "You probably ought to have taken the ones we—"
"Not looting boots off a dead body, Hawke. Not now, not ever."
Kiara's glance turned into a smirk. "Come on, Aveline. Does the city guard really care where your boots came from? I mean, if they're not going to provide nice, comfy, cushioned deerskin—"
"Hawke."
"Spoilsport."
"How did you manage to find us, Aveline?" Amelle asked. "I didn't think the docks were on your route this week."
"They're not," she replied. "I'm not on duty."
"She loves us," Kiara interrupted. "She misses the good old days."
Amelle said, "Fighting for our lives against darkspawn? Oh, or do you mean the two weeks of endless vomiting on the ship? There was also that time we landed and instead of having a nice estate to come home to, we had a hovel and a year of indentured servitude…"
Aveline ignored her. Aveline ignored both of them, continuing, "I saw your mother in the market today."
"You came to collect us for our mother?" Kiara asked, wide-eyed. "Really?"
Brow furrowed, Aveline shook her head. "You should let a person finish their explanations before you interrupt, Hawke. Terrible habit."
Amelle snickered. Loudly. Earning a scowl from her sister, but it was worth it.
"So, Mother sent you to walk us home?" Kiara added, adopting a painfully patient expression. Painfully feigned, too, Amelle knew.
"She said it was the last day of your… job. Today. Seemed like a thing to acknowledge."
A year. A whole year. Some days it felt like a lifetime. Others, Amelle felt certain it had only been a moment since—since Lothering, and running, and the ogre. She wondered if Aveline felt the same way. She knew, from whispered conversations in the room they shared, Kiara did.
"I wish I had the coin to splurge on a bottle of something decent to celebrate," Kiara said mournfully. "Alas."
Before she could think better of it, Amelle opened her mouth and said, "Remember that time Carver drank the bottle of Antivan brandy Papa was saving for a special occasion?"
Instead of anger or silence or stillness—Kiara's usual responses to a mention of their brother—her sister only snorted a laugh. "Maker. Papa was so mad." Then she grinned. "You know, I was the one who told Carver where to find it."
"So when he accused you of trying to get him in trouble…" Amelle trailed off, chuckling. The pinprick of sadness still remained when she thought of Carver, but it was getting easier, slowly. She still missed him, and some days, no matter how incomprehensible it was, she missed what an utter pain he could be, but the grief had subsided into something manageable.
"I wasn't trying to get him in trouble," sniffed Kiara. "I was just—"
"Trying to get him in trouble," Aveline finished for her. "Maker's breath, Hawke, you've always been this way, haven't you?"
Kiara straightened a little and blinked wide, innocent eyes at Aveline. "What way?"
"That way," the other woman said, not bothering to hide her laughter. "And don't steal your sister's tricks. She'll always be better at playing innocent than you."
"Excuse me?" squawked Amelle. "Playing?"
This only served to make Aveline and Kiara both laugh. Hard. Amelle opened her mouth to continue her protestations that she would only ever play innocent, then let her mouth close with a sigh.
Her sister knew her best, after all.
They rounded a corner and soon a distinctly familiar odor reached all three of them. It certainly didn't originate from Gamlen's hovel — Andraste herself would weep the day he ever cooked anything — but one of his neighbors, Amelle suspected, made a frequent practice of boiling cabbage. That's what it smelled like, at least. And the smell permeated bloody everything. She and Kiara had held long discussions on whether working at the docks was enough to rid themselves of the stink.
The answer they came to was generally in the negative.
"Oh, good," Kiara said, flatly. "Cabbage. Again."
"One of these days, Hawke, your neighbor's going to find something worse to boil."
"Like his socks?" Kiara asked, then shook her head. "Too late, he did that last week."
"And it was every bit as pleasant as you'd think," Amelle added, on a shudder. "I don't know where Uncle Gamlen gets off complaining about poor Cupcake. How he can complain about one little mabari—"
"Oh," Kiara said breezily, skipping up the stairs to Gamlen's, "it's easy to complain when you're Gamlen. Plus I suspect his sense of smell is just this side of dead."
Aveline huffed a brief laugh. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
Kiara paused, hand on the door. "Maker, Aveline. Now you're joking. What's the world coming to?"
The guard gave a sour look, but Amelle could tell her heart wasn't in it. A hint of a smile played about the corners of Aveline's mouth. "Are you planning on keeping us out here all night, Hawke? I'll say this for Gamlen: it does smell slightly less vile indoors than out."
Kiara inclined her head to acknowledge the point. When she pushed the door open, however, Amelle saw no light within. Strange. Too strange. Mother rarely left the house at all, and never at night, without one—or both—of them as guards. Even as Kiara reached over her shoulder for her bow, Amelle allowed a tiny flicker of flame to bloom on her palm, and she edged forward, holding her hand out to illuminate the darkness within.
"Mother?" she called.
"Killer? Cupcake, sweetheart, are you there? Come." Kiara added, her tone tremulous and her mirth vanished. When the mabari didn't appear, Kiara pulled her bowstring taut. Amelle let her fire grow just a fraction brighter. "Uncle Gamlen?"
"Mother didn't say anything about this to you, Aveline?" Amelle asked without turning to look back at the warrior. "She was fine when you saw her?"
"Mmm," Aveline replied. "She was—"
The door to the back room opened wide, silencing Aveline and allowing a spill of light to streak across the floor. Killer came bounding out of confinement, barking and turning in happy circles. "Surprise, darlings!" their mother added, silhouetted in the doorway.
Beside her, Kiara closed her eyes and her lips moved in a silent prayer—or curse, Amelle thought. Curse was probably more likely. After another moment, she lowered her bow. Amelle, on the other hand, lit the candles in the room. It was hard to be angry when their mother looked so pleased.
It had been a long time since they'd seen their mother's smile.
"What…" Kiara began, still sounding half-choked, "What's going on?"
"We're having a party, sweetling! To celebrate!"
Kiara shot a glance over her shoulder, and even in the dim candlelight, Aveline's blush was starkly visible. "You knew about this? Aveline. I didn't think you had it in you."
Aveline arched a brow, the effect ruined somewhat by the lingering pink cheeks. "It was Leandra's idea. Maker, Hawke, I'm… I'm just glad you two aren't going to be… working for that woman anymore."
"She wasn't so bad."
"For a smuggler," Amelle added. "Intent to give us every difficult job in Kirkwall."
"Beggars can't be choosers," Kiara sing-songed back. Because Amelle was looking in her mother's direction, she saw the moment of sorrow that creased the familiar features, and the echo of haunted grief that swam in her eyes.
"Dinner smells—" Amelle began.
"—Like it's not cooking yet," Mother said, smiling again. "You know that's the neighbors and their cabbage again. But Aveline was kind enough to bring a bottle of brandy."
Aveline punched Kiara lightly on the shoulder. It was still enough to make her sister stagger. "A bottle of something decent. To celebrate."
"And where is our very favorite uncle during these festivities?" Kiara asked, surreptitiously rubbing the spot Aveline had hit.
Amelle was fetching cups from one of the higher shelves. "A good question. I wouldn't have thought wild horses would keep Gamlen away from a bottle of something fermented, decent or otherwise."
Cupcake let out a happy bark and wiggled his rump, while their mother looked… strangely sheepish. It was an odd expression on her face. "You know your uncle, darlings. He had very important business and…" she paused, looking thoughtful, and that pause lasted just a heartbeat too long. Kiara turned and smirked at Amelle.
"Mother didn't tell him about the brandy."
"Can you blame her?" Amelle asked, clunking down four mismatched mugs as Aveline did the honors, pouring a generous splash into each cup. "There wouldn't be any left."
"Now, girls," Mother began, trying to look cross and failing, "though he's not perfect—"
Kiara's snort, though indelicate, was eloquent. Mother's sigh held a breath of laughter.
"All right, no, I didn't tell him." She sat at the tiny table and pushed her cup slowly around in a small circle. "It was important that we celebrate tonight. Just us."
"Just us Hawkes," Kiara supplied, grabbing a stool and setting it down next to Mother.
Aveline coughed lightly. "Just the Hawkes plus one." But Mother was having none of it.
"Don't be ridiculous, Aveline," she said in a crisp tone that brooked no argument. It was the same tone she often used when Amelle or Kiara refused to eat their vegetables.
"Oh, Mother's already adopted you, Aveline." Kiara's smile was wider than Amelle had seen it in… too long. "Don't tell me this is a surprise."
Grinning, Amelle lifted her glass to Aveline, who was looking pleased and discomfited by turns. "Lucky you, you're an honorary one of us."
"I can think of worse things," said Kiara, lifting her own chipped mug. She threw a wink at Amelle. "It's too dark in here, Mely. Is Aveline blushing yet?"
"You'll know it when she hits you."
Aveline didn't hit her, though. The guardswoman lifted her chin and her glass and said, "To the Hawkes, then. A more resilient bunch I've never met."
The clink of glasses—cracked and chipped and mismatched as they were—over the table sounded like victory.
#
Kiara couldn't remember a better day. Not in recent history, anyway. And not only because of the truly excellent brandy, or the dinner with good meat and no cabbage to be seen, or even because it was her last day—ever—working for Athenril. It was the company, and the laughter. It was Mother leaning on one elbow, smiling for the first time in ages. It was seeing Amelle and Aveline, teasing each other.
It was the end of something old and the beginning of something new. For the first time since the blighted battle of Ostagar, she felt like she had a future, and that future was in her hands. It wasn't going to be easy, necessarily, and maybe it would never look like the Kirkwall life Mother had envisioned for them, but it would be theirs. Without Athenril's missions, Amelle wouldn't have to drag her magic out in public quite so often. Somewhere, she felt sure Papa was heaving a sigh of relief.
They needed to get out of this house, but now that her time was her own again, she'd figure something out. She'd heard rumors that one of the dwarven merchants was planning an expedition. He might need muscle. Or at least a steady hand. Good archers were hard to come by—Maker, if nothing else, working for Athenril had taught her that much.
"Kiri, you planning on sitting there staring into the fire all night?"
Turning her head, Kiara smiled at her sister. "Just finishing the last of the brandy. Join me? You know if we leave a drop, it'll be gone the moment Uncle Gamlen catches a whiff."
Amelle rescued her empty mug on the way over, and sank down next to Kiara. "It's hard to believe this day is finally here, isn't it?"
Kiara grinned, wrapping an arm tight around her sister's shoulders. "The whole world's ours to conquer, Mely. Feels like hope, doesn't it?"
"Maybe we could just stick to a little corner? I'm not sure even the intrepid Hawke sisters are capable of ruling the whole world."
"We could try!"
"You're drunk."
Kiara giggled. "I wish. No. I'm just… I'm happy, Amelle. Isn't that… strange? I'm happy."
"Shh!" Amelle hissed, trying not to laugh even as Kiara squeezed her shoulders. "No better way of tempting fate than that."
Kiara knew her sister was only half-joking, but the half that wasn't in jest… didn't bother her. She finally felt steady, finally felt… right. They'd already been through the Void and back. Now that things were finally beginning to clear, why shouldn't she feel happy?
"Hang fate," she said cheerfully, splashing the last of the brandy into her and Amelle's cups. They touched glasses again and drank, and after a few moments, Amelle tipped her head to the side, resting it against Kiara's shoulder. Kiara looked down at Mely out of the corner of her eye.
"Now who's drunk?" she asked her sister.
"I'm not drunk," Amelle protested. "I'm just…"
"Happy?"
"Relaxed," Amelle corrected her. "And, yes. Happy." And then a tiny frown formed between her brows. "And thinking." She pulled away and looked up at Kiara, the firelight flickering in her eyes. "I've been thinking about Grandfather's will," she said softly. "And I think—"
But whatever it was that had been on Amelle's mind, she didn't get a chance to share it. Mother came in from the tiny back room, cradling two bundles against her chest, wound up in burlap and tied, incongruously, with silky ribbon, one white, one red.
"I have something for you, my darling girls." Her smile faltered a moment as she looked down at the wrapped bundles, and when she looked up again her eyes were shining. "It… isn't much, but—"
"You got us presents?" blurted Kiara. "Mother, you shouldn't—"
"Indoor voice, Kiara, please." Mother drew in a breath and handed her daughters the two bundles. "As I said, it isn't much, but… well, I suppose you'll see for yourself."
She and Amelle exchanged a brief glance, and Kiara saw her own excitement reflected back in her sister's eyes. "Count of three?"
Amelle nodded. "One."
"Two."
Neither of them waited for three. It was an old joke, made slightly melancholy by the fact that Carver wasn't there to add his bellowing cry of, "You said three. Why do you always do that?"
Kiara heard Amelle gasp, but she couldn't tear her gaze from the object in her own hands long enough to look.
It was a fox. A small, stuffed fox. Not identical to the one she'd toted around through most of her childhood, but near enough as made no difference. It even had a silvery-grey ribbon tied in a bow around its neck. Just like her ragged old one had. Before she left it behind, like so many of their other Lothering things.
A stuffed fox didn't matter much when the darkspawn were on one's heels.
Tears filled her eyes, and she clutched the little toy close. "Mother—"
When Kiara glanced toward her mother, she saw Amelle still gazing down at a little stuffed rabbit, ears floppy and whiskers crooked.
"Just a little reminder," Mother said, with the briskness that meant she was fighting tears of her own. "Of who you are. And where you come from. You're grown now, my precious young women, but you'll always be my little girls." Reaching out, she settled her hands atop their heads. "This has not… this has not been an easy year. For any of us. But especially for you two. I think… I think your father would be proud." Here tears did finally spill down Mother's cheeks. "And your brother would never admit it, but he'd be proud, too."
"He'd grumble about it, though," Amelle whispered, running her hands down the little rabbit's sides.
"And probably break something, just to remind us he could," Kiara added.
Their mother's laugh was low and a little broken, but it was a laugh. "And we wouldn't have had near enough food to feed him."
"Cub was such a little piglet," murmured Amelle, still never pulling her eyes from the rabbit.
Kiara watched her sister a moment. There was no doubt she and Carver had locked horns — they were of two entirely different temperaments — but she was also his twin, and though Amelle didn't talk much about losing him, sometimes Kiara thought her sister missed Carver in a way none of them could ever fully understand. She reached over and touched Amelle's hand, saying, "Nothing little about him. Do you remember the way he clumped up and down the stairs in those boots of his?"
Amelle looked away from the rabbit she held, her smile torn between mirth and sadness. "And the way Papa would yell at him to stop tromping around like a herd of bronto?"
"And the way his greatsword was always banging against something?"
"How many times," Mother sighed, "how many times did I have to tell him to be more careful with it in the house?"
"He wasn't clumsy," Amelle said, lost again in the rabbit. "He was just…"
"A boy," Mother supplied. "A boy who grew larger and faster than he realized."
"Maker," sighed Kiara, leaning back in her chair, "how he lorded it over me when he was finally taller than I was."
"I remember you looked up at him," Amelle chuckled, "and you— and you poked him in the chest, do you remember? And you said…" Amelle sat up a bit, inclined her head and tossed nonexistent hair as she said, in an eerily passable impression of Kiara, "That just means you're an overgrown cub, Cub. All the inches in the world still won't make you the boss."
Kiara remembered it clearly, remembered the frustration that had made Carver screw up his face and, of all things, stick out his tongue before turning on his heel and stomping off.
Mother's smile was fond, but not nearly as sad as it had been over the last year. "He got so exasperated with you, my darling kit. With the both of you. It was difficult for him, growing up with nothing but sisters, I think. He was convinced the two of you were locked in some sort of conspiracy against him most of the time."
Kiara and Amelle exchanged another glance, their eyes finding each other's at precisely the same moment once again. Kiara's lips twitched with laughter, and Amelle's eyebrows rose. "Truth be told, Mama," Kiara said, "he was probably right."
They were still laughing—laughing and telling old tales, some of them old, some of them new—when Gamlen came stumbling into the house, door slamming behind him. "What's the meaning of all this?" he growled, spreading his arms wide—unsteadily—to take in the cozy scene. And, more accurately, the bottle of brandy, Kiara thought uncharitably.
Amelle gave their uncle that precise, patented, wide-eyed look of innocence Aveline had earlier alluded to, and said, "Sorry, Uncle Gamlen, we've just had the last of it. We meant to save you some, but…"
It only started them all giggling again—even Mother—and all Gamlen's stomping and swearing and annoyance couldn't even begin to steal their mirth and their joy.
One hand still resting atop the stuffed fox, the other edged out toward her sister. Amelle's warm fingers met her half-way, and as they sat before the fire laughing, Kiara couldn't help imagining the better days just around the corner. Fate or no fate. Everything was going to change. For the better, this time. She just knew it.
